


That Would Be A Life

by AJfanfic



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Injury, Fade to Black, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Originally Inspired by Brokeback Mountain, Oxenfurt (The Witcher), Period-Typical Homophobia, Sharing a Bath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26648887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJfanfic/pseuds/AJfanfic
Summary: Jaskier and Geralt, through the years, through partings and finding each other again, to the end.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26
Collections: Witcher Big Bang





	That Would Be A Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for the Witcher Big Bang! I started it ages ago, and it was really great to finally finish this.  
> Once the artist I was paired with shares their piece with me, I'll link it here.

“I could live with you forever in the woods, and that would be a life.”

The day dawned much like the day before, and the day before that: damp and cold, the heavy clouds threatening rain. Geralt was quietly dreading the moment they decided to follow through on the threat. He was relatively unbothered by the chill but his leathers clung uncomfortably to his skin and hair felt heavy with condensation. Roach and Pegasus plodded along in quiet acceptance. Jaskier did not.

“Can we please, please, find a place to sleep with a roof tonight? I’m not picky, I’ll take a barn, a stable, anything over another night in a muddy field.”

“I thought you liked sleeping under the stars.”

“There are no stars to see, Geralt, and I’m tired of being cold.”

Geralt looked over at him. Jaskier’s hands shook slightly where he clutched numbly at the reins. His cheeks were bitten red by the wind and Geralt realized it was perhaps colder for the human than he’d thought. Jaskier pouted and curled in on himself, trying to remain as completely beneath his cloak as possible.

“Fine. There’s a town not far ahead, they should have space at the inn.”

Jaskier grinned. “Finally!”

The sky opened. Jaskier’s excitement was washed away in the deluge, along with what felt like half the road. The few miles to the next town took nearly twice as long as they ought to have, horses stumbling through thick mud, riders bent low to their necks. Through the sheet of water, the monotony of the road was blurred into something nearly fantastical. Jaskier wished he could appreciate it, but his hands were far too stiff to hold a quill and the icy water working its way down his back made him uninclined to the attempt.

The inn had only one room, with only one bed. It was large enough for two, assuming the two slept nearly on top of one another. Geralt huffed at the sight of it and spread his bedroll by the fire before Jaskier could complain. He made sure to put his bad leg closer to the warmth of the fire. It had ached something fierce since the storm swept in. He knelt and slumped onto the thin blanket. The tongue of his boot cut into his shin, but it was too cold to sleep without them. He lay still, waiting for Jaskier’s breathing to even out. It didn’t take long. Geralt shifted, a pulled muscle in his shoulder complaining. His head spun with drink. He’d have a headache come morning, and Jaskier would too, but that wouldn’t stop him from playing that godsdamned lute and singing at the top of his lungs on the road. Geralt rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up, trying to get comfortable.

Jaskier sighed from the bed, still awake after all. “Get up here.”

“It’s fine.”

“Not a request.”

Geralt clambered to his feet and pulled his blanket with him. He leaned against the bed long enough to shuck his boots and crawled under the covers. Jaskier’s body heat had warmed them, and part of him wondered why they didn’t sleep like this every night. He spread his blanket over them both, and lay down, head pillowed on his arm. Jaskier shifted, his bare shin brushing against Geralt’s freezing toes. Geralt didn’t move away. He shifted closer, sleepily tangling their legs together beneath the blankets, his hand coming to rest on his hip.

“Jaskier.” Geralt pushed him away, a hand to his chest. This was why they didn’t sleep like this.

Jaskier caught his hand and interlaced their fingers, a fist on the pillow. Geralt sat up. He needed to go back to his spot on the floor by the fire. Jaskier shifted to kneel over his knees.

“Get off,” he growled.

“Make me,” Jaskier bit back, “I know you could. Make me get off.” He fisted his hand in Geralt’s shirt, the other cupping his jaw, playing with the hair at the back of his neck, brushing a thumb against his pulse point. “Or you could drop the fucking act and let yourself have something nice for once.”

Geralt surged forward and pinned Jaskier beneath him, their foreheads pressed together. He wanted to kiss him. He ground their hips together, Jaskier bucking up into the rough touch. His stupidly impractical silk pants were soft and warm when he fumbled with the ties on them, Jaskier’s hands too busy tugging at the leather of his own pants to help.

Geralt woke slowly, arms wrapped around the body on top of him. Jaskier smelled of parchment, of the charcoal of his pen, of sweat and musk and Geralt. He slipped from the bed and set his clothes to rights. Roach needed caring for. Jaskier propped himself up on his elbows as Geralt left, eyes soft with sleep and brow wrinkled.

“See you at breakfast?”

Geralt nodded and made his escape.

They fell into bed together like a falling into a bad habit, painfully conscious of every moment until it became second nature to crawl into the same bedroll, to wrap up in the same furs, and muss the second bed in the morning so no one asks questions. It was about the body heat on cold nights, it was about the long spells in the wild with no one else to help burn off the adrenaline of a hunt, it was because two bedrolls protected their backs from the rocky terrain better than one. They never talked about it, the way they reached for each other. Both convinced themselves there was nothing to talk about.

Autumn came and went, and winter was crisp on the air when Geralt finally turned his path towards Kaer Morhen. Jaskier followed him until they reached the crossroads that split their paths: one on north and the other east, to Oxenfurt.

“Don’t do anything too exciting without me, yeah?”

“Vesemir will likely have me chopping wood all winter.”

Jaskier pressed a hand to his forehead in mock horror. “I can’t believe I’ll miss it! My oeuvre will never be complete without the tale; the white wolf of Rivia, gorgeous, shirtless, facing his greatest foe yet: chores!”

“Shut up.” Jaskier’s brows raised at the sharpness of his voice. Geralt tightened his grip on the reins and relaxed his tone. “The keep is freezing, doubt I’ll be shirtless.”

“Send word when you’re near Oxenfurt, after the melt. I’ll meet you there.”

Geralt hummed. He knew Jaskier would know it was as good as a promise to call. Jaskier did.

“Have a good winter, Geralt.”

Spring had nearly passed, slow and ponderous, by the time Geralt came around. He’d been in Redania since he’d left Kaer Morhen, taking the long route along the Pontar. He’d been busy. Drowners, wargs, a kikimore near Rinde. He rode into Oxenfurt slowly, because he wanted to ride quickly. What if Jaskier had left? He only taught for the winter, perhaps he’d decided it wasn’t worth waiting for Geralt, who for any number of reasons might not ever come. He could have been dead. He could have simply decided it wasn’t worth it, to have a bard disturbing his peace. He wasn’t, and he hadn’t, but Jaskier might not have known that.

He was waiting for him, bag packed by the door to his apartments, except for the journal and pen tucked into the waist of his stupid silk pants. Geralt didn’t ask how his winter was. Jaskier spins the tale out over the course of the next month, regaling him with the works of his students, some good, some humorous, some only humorous because they’d been intended seriously. He loved teaching, perhaps more than he loved travel, although not more than performing. Geralt wondered where he fell on that scale, then left both the thought and the bard in the dust, kicking Roach to a canter. When he dismounted to let her drink her fill at a stream, Jaskier caught up to him. He didn’t ask about his winter. That night, Geralt volunteered that he had indeed chopped wood and had kept not only his shirt on, but another on top of that.

“I hope you don’t intend to be so modest with me,” Jaskier teased, his bedroll still strapped to his pack.

“Doubt I could manage for long.” Geralt hooked a foot behind Jaskier’s ankle from where he was sprawled on his bedroll and toppled the bard onto him. Jaskier squawked, then laughed. He pinned Geralt’s wrists to the ground and Geralt let him. He always gave as good as he got. Geralt wasn’t sure whether Jaskier enjoyed it, or if he was just humoring him. Geralt wasn’t sure if he enjoyed it either. He bit Jaskier’s lower lip when he kissed him and stopped thinking.

Winter came, and spring followed, and every time they parted without a goodbye or a promise. Every time they found each other again. Some years, Geralt knocked on Jaskier’s door and shook loose snow from the eaves onto his hair. Jaskier had used it as an excuse to run his hands through it, the warmth of him melting it into the white strands. He’d pulled him inside, drawn the curtains shut, and kissed him senseless against the door. Other years, they’d find each other when fruit hung heavy with summer from the branches in Rinde, or Vizima, or Novigrad. Nod, like acquaintances, perform, fill a contract like they weren’t just about out of their minds with skin hunger until they had the coin for a room and could risk the touch they’d spent months burning for. Or at least, that Geralt had.

He knew Jaskier took other lovers, and it ate at him. What if he found a man he couldn’t trust, or one who turned against him in the dead of winter when Geralt wasn’t there to protect him. He could take a stoning, he could break his bonds before he drowned (they wouldn’t waste chains on someone bound for the bottom of a lake) but Jaskier couldn’t. It was stupid, a stupid risk. No man's touch could be worth it. Geralt wrapped his arms around Jaskier, not as tightly as he wanted but as tightly as he dared. His breath was warm and even against his chest, in sync with his own. Geralt counted them, in and out, until he fell asleep.

Spring came suddenly that year, bursting into being like it couldn’t stand another moment buried beneath the ice. With it came Geralt, once again riding to some tiny town to meet a man who might not show up at all. He wondered if he’d ever lose that fear, that followed him even now after twenty years of Jaskier showing up. Geralt pressed his lips against a bruise on Jaskier’s hip, tongue soothing the marks some other man had left. No. His fingers pressed into the uneven skin of Jaskier’s thigh, striped with reminders of a warg he hadn’t been fast enough to stop. Geralt didn’t think he would.

With his face pressed against Jaskier’s soft stomach, he feels the words more than hears them.

“Do you ever think about retiring? We could find a little place, somewhere outside Oxenfurt.” His hand stroked through Geralt’s hair, soothing the tension away even as his words built it back. “I’d teach sometimes, you could update the school’s bestiary. The coast is beautiful there.”

“Witchers don’t retire, you know that.” Geralt closed his eyes. “And they’d never leave us be.”

They crossed the wyvern the next day, passing along the edge of some lordling’s pastures. He’d had no contract, but there was almost certainly one waiting at the manor. Their noise had caught the beast’s attention, and Geralt drew his blade. The barely healed wound across his right shoulder, courtesy of an endrega, complained sharply. He pulled three potions from his Roach’s saddlebags, downing them quickly as the wyvern took to the skies. Concern painted Jaskier’s face as he let the bottles drop, a slight tremor in his hands.

“Golden oriole, swallow, and tawny owl at once?”

Geralt grunted. “Stay with Roach, and get back to the tree line.”

Jaskier did as he was told for once, backing away as the wyvern swooped. A well-timed blast of aard brought the beast down, and the dance began. Geralt was beautiful when he fought, Jaskier had always thought so, but he was beautiful sitting in the corner of a grungy inn as well, and there his life wasn’t usually in danger. He loved watching his battles, but with time he had come to love it because it meant he knew how the hurts that left blood smeared on their sheets came about, rather than for the rush of it. This bearing witness was as close as he could come to fighting beside him.

The wyvern’s head snapped to the side with another aard, and its eyes caught on to Jaskier. It wove around Geralt, sprinting for the larger, softer target of the bard and the horse. Jaskier could smell the rotten stench of its breath when Geralt threw himself at the creature, slamming into its side and throwing it from its path. The creature’s tail whipped around. The barbed end sank into Geralt’s shoulder just as his sword found its place inside its chest. Both collapsed to the ground.

Jaskier fumbled through Roach’s saddlebags, grabbing a vial of opaque white, and ran to his side. Geralt yanked the barb from his body, shaking violently. Jaskier didn’t bother trying to hand him the potion, pulling the cork out with his teeth and supporting Geralt’s head with the other. He poured the viscous liquid down his throat. Geralt spasmed, trying to curl in on himself as the toxicity burned through his body. Jaskier wrapped his arms around his chest and held him through the comedown as white honey washed away the poison in his blood, both the wyvern’s and the ones he had taken himself. Eventually, he stilled. Jaskier pushed the sweaty hair from his forehead.

“Better?”

“Better.” They stood slowly, Jaskier hovering close to him. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for protecting me, my brave witcher.”

“I nearly didn’t.”

“But you did. You have this whole time I’ve followed you.”

Something snapped at those words. Geralt snarled, grabbing Jaskier roughly by the doublet.

“Is following me worth it if I lead you to your fucking death?” He shouted, sword callused hands leaving runs in the delicate silk around Jaskier's throat.

“You don't want me to leave! Else you wouldn't find me every godsdamned spring.” Jaskier's thumb left a streak of ink where he gripped Geralt's jaw. He tried to twist from his grasp but Jaskier didn't let him, other hand coming to tangle in his hair. He didn’t mind the knots, yanking hard as though to keep him from running, although Geralt hadn’t let go of him either. Geralt couldn't meet his eyes. The adrenaline fled his body, he shuddered and pressed his face into the crook of his neck. Jaskier pulled him against him, supporting his weight. “It's alright,” he mumbled against his hair. “It's alright.”

Geralt's shaking gentled, surrounded by the warm smell of parchment and wood. He sighed, soothed in spite of himself.

“You didn't answer my question.”

“I don't think I need to, Geralt.”

The manor wasn’t far. Geralt hacked the head off the wyvern and strapped it to his bags on Roach’s saddle. Were it not for the added weight of it, Jaskier would have insisted on riding behind him. He walked instead, hand twitching toward Geralt every time he shifted.

Jaskier did the talking, and managed two nights of the lordling’s hospitality in exchange for music at dinner, in addition to the reward posted for the wyvern’s head.

“I’d be honored to perform,” he said, sweeping a bow far lower than etiquette required. It was entirely likely the bard actually outranked the man. Geralt found himself smiling at the thought. He wondered if it had occurred to Jaskier at all. “If we might have a bath drawn to wash off the dust of the road, first, I’ll see to Master Geralt’s wounds and rejoin you posthaste.”

They were shown upstairs to guest rooms on either side of a shared bathing chamber, a maid pouring hot water into the tub. Geralt breathed deeply, letting the steam fill his lungs. It soothed the burning along the back of his throat, left over from the potions, but pulled at his wounded shoulder and he grunted.

“Go sit down, I’ll give you a hand.” Jaskier waved a hand at the stool beside the tub. Geralt sat, leaning back against the wall with a sigh.

“Would the witcher like assistance?” The question was addressed to Jaskier, the girl’s distaste for the task only just not overwhelming her professionalism.

“Don’t worry yourself with it, I’d hate to get blood and all the nasty things on his armor on your lovely hands.” Jaskier winked. “Be a doll and leave some bandages in his bedroom, though, will you?”

“Course, sir.” Geralt decided it would be easier for both of them if he closed his eyes. Jaskier came over and undid the buckle on his sword belt, setting them in easy reach, then the ones holding his spaulders in place. It burned, as the leather pulled away from the wound, but Jaskier managed without making him move enough for it to truly hurt. His touch was light, efficient, gentle without lingering. The laces of his right rerebrace came next, quickly on the uninjured side. Geralt clenched his jaw against the pain he knew was coming. Jaskier squeezed his elbow, reassuring, then he was stepping away as the girl went to pour something into the water.

“I have my own, if you don’t mind. I prefer my own scents.”

She nodded, and slipped out of the room without looking at Geralt once.

“Here,” Jaskier guided his right hand to his shoulder. “To hold onto.” He lifted Geralt’s arm slowly, not an inch more than was needed, but the wound screamed in protest all the same. It was deep, deep enough he perhaps should have taken the last of his White Raffard’s decoction, but with the toxicity of it, it may have done more harm than good. He’d never pushed the limits of white honey before, and it wasn’t looking forward to the day he did. Geralt breathed carefully through the pain as Jaskier quickly unlaced the rerebrace and carefully lowered his arm again. His chest piece came away with some awkward maneuvering, but didn’t ask too much of his torn shoulder. Ruined shirt and gambeson, pants, and boots joined Jaskier’s in a pile on the floor he kicked outside the door. Fresh blood dripped from the wound, warm and wet down his back from where his shirt had stuck to it. Jaskier locked the doors as he slipped into the water, then followed him.

Geralt let his head fall back against the side of the tub, exhaustion weighing down his limbs. The battle, the potions, the bard. The bard who had wet a cloth and was gently wiping the blood and dust from around his wound like he was a nurse rather than a noble and a famous performer, who was ringing it out completely uncaring of the red stains growing beneath his short nails. He let his eyes fall mostly shut. It was easier to look at him like that, blurred by the steam and his white lashes into being not quite so much. Jaskier washed him carefully, kneeling between his knees like he was something delicate. It was hard to tell when bathing together had become this. It started with a need to share precious hot water and their mutual lack of shame. Then the threat of Jaskier chopping off his hair next time he was unconscious had his strong, callused fingers working through the locks until they were white again. And then and then and then, it got them here, Jaskier not quite sitting in his lap, not quite kneeling before him, and, Geralt realized, his hand resting on Jaskier’s waist. He pulled it back, rested it on the edge of the tub, and ignored Jaskier’s downturned lips.

They soaked until the water had gone cool and cloudy with dirt and blood. Jaskier didn’t offer Geralt a hand up and he didn’t ask for one. The bandages were on the bed, beside Geralt’s newly washed clothes. The rip in both his shirt and gambeson would need mending, but wasn’t beyond salvation. He pulled on his smallclothes but left the rest. Jaskier huffed.

“Suppose mine are in my room.” He nodded to the bed. “Sit down, I want to look at that.”

“I’m fine,” Geralt said, but he sat.

Winter came and winter went, and Geralt considered not returning to the keep. He didn’t let the alternatives form fully in his mind: hazy images of Oxenfurt, of apartments above some little shop or of the sprawling brown-green of Toussaint’s vineyards. At the crossroads, they took the same paths they always had.

Jaskier wrote a song that winter. It was about a traveler, compelled to make his way down a road called Time, passing each season a town along the way that he can never quite make his way back to when he tries. It is sung in courts across the continent, in candlelit sitting rooms and walled gardens. It doesn’t feel like a song for big spaces, where it might echo. It demands you hold it close, sit beside it. Jaskier thinks he hates it. It might be the best thing he’s written.

Jaskier got Geralt’s letter on the last day of classes.  _ Meet me in Breaker’s Point.  _ His horse was packed and saddled before lunch, and he was on the road not long after. The coast. Geralt had called him to the coast. His back ached with Pegasus’s gait. He wasn’t as young as he had been. He’d been so young. Now, he was a few years away from being as grey as Geralt. He didn’t like to think that he’d been waiting all this time, but there were journals full of songs, songs being sung across the continent, that would say otherwise.

The sun caught on Geralt’s hair and Jaskier’s breath caught in his chest. He wished for his lute so that he might preserve the melody of the moment, but he had left it back at the inn. The keeper had pointed him to the cliff, and there he was. Jaskier couldn’t fight the smile splitting his face as he picked his way along the path to him. He didn’t want to. They ran into each other and for a moment all that existed was the strength of Geralt's arms around him, the leather-salt-safe smell of him. Then he was pulling away, golden gaze softened by the setting sun.

“Geralt.”

“Jaskier.”

“After all this time." His hands itched to bury themselves in his tangled hair, to work it smooth, but the town was close enough they could still be seen. "I was starting to think you didn't want this too."

"This?"

"Us, here. Like I used to talk about."

"Oh." Like being tossed from the back door of a tavern, Jaskier felt he'd been abruptly shut out of Geralt's eyes. "I didn't— I have a contract. A siren."

"Oh." Jaskier didn't let his smile slip. "I'll see you tonight then?"

"Don't wait up. She's supposed to come out at midnight."

"I see. In the morning then. Be careful."

"I, um. I hope your trip was good."

"It was lovely."

Geralt slipped into their room a few hours after midnight. The fire still burned and wasn't that just a fitting metaphor Jaskier thought. No matter how long he left him waiting, he wouldn't let it go out, wouldn't let him come back to the cold and dark. He didn't pause his playing as Geralt pulled off his sandy boots and peeled away his soaked tunic and trousers. He perched on the bed next to him and Jaskier shifted so his back rested against his broad chest, letting the warmth of him seep into sea cold skin. The last notes rang in the air and Jaskier let them fade. Geralt hooked his chin over his shoulder. His stubble scraped against his skin.

"That was beautiful," Geralt apologized. "Does it have words?"

"I'm glad you finally agree." Jaskier twisted to face him. "It's called 'Geralt' and no, I don't think it does."

They part slowly that year, drawing the nights out in a cottage at the edge of a grateful chief’s lands. They are nothing like the nights they used to pass, rough touches in a clearing just out of sight of the road. Instead, there are fires in hearths and actual beds, because Jaskier’s back had gone out the year before and neither felt like a repeat of that experience. It feels comfortable, constant, even as they feel the cold settle in and know it’s coming to an end. There will be another spring.

The final snow came and went. Trees unfurled their leaves and buds bloomed. Geralt waited.

Summers heat set in and the grass withered once more. Cicadas sang. Geralt turned towards Oxenfurt. He may as well start his search at the beginning.

Geralt moved with his eyes closed, feeling nothing but his sword and his blood humming within him. He worked through simple forms, the ones he’d learned as a boy more than a lifetime ago. The keep’s walls whistling with wind around him, the uneven packed earth beneath his feet. It had been night, late enough his then unmutated eyes were blinded by the dark, when he’d mastered the first form. He’d taken such pride in it. He’d had nothing then, as he has nothing now. Only his body and the swords that with time have become an extension of it, the wolf’s claws.

He’d thought about faith, about the soul and life after. Geralt had always taken comfort from the fact that there was none, his body the only thing he could not lose because there would be no him to lose it, once it died. Geralt finished the form and found the thought was not so comforting now.

Vesemir had found Geralt at Kaer Morhen’s doors earlier that year than he had in the past twenty, barely after the first snows had fallen in the pass. He gripped his shoulder and knocked their foreheads together.

"There's potatoes that need chopping if you want a hot dinner."

Geralt nodded, gratefulness in his eyes, and headed for the kitchen.

Lambert and Eskel arrived together a week later just as dark was falling, having met up on the way. They dropped their packs and found Geralt in the kitchens, butchering a haunch of venison to be smoked. It was easy to fall back into the patterns of their childhood a century past, refreshed every winter. Geralt was quiet, not rising to Lambert’s taunts or Eskel’s prodding for tales of his past year. Vesemir hovered around the edges of their one-sided conversation. There was tension in his jaw that usually took weeks after their homecoming to accrue, and a blankness to Geralt’s expression they’d seen only once before, when they’d returned before the last field had been tilled to help Vesemir bury the rest of their brothers. They let it rest but resolved silently between them to learn where he’d found the millstone around his neck.

Lambert landed upon it as dinner ended, with his usual lack of tact. Jaskier had always found it hard to believe that Geralt was considered the second-best conversationalist among his school. You’ll have to introduce me and let me make my own judgment on that, he’d said.

“Quarrel with your bard or something? I always thought one of these years you’d bring him along with you.” Lambert tore the crust from his bread, soaking up the juices from the meat. 

“He taught in the winter, but I wanted to. He's dead."

“A monster?” he asked. Eskel and Vesemir shot him a look, but he pressed on. “Were you there?” The question: do you blame yourself?

“I wasn’t.” The answer: yes.

Eskel came to his room that night, knocking with the slow-quick-quick pattern they’d used before the trials, before their hearing was good enough to know the other by his tread outside the door. He didn’t wait for Geralt to open the door. Pausing to add another log to the fire and kick off his boots, he slid into bed behind Geralt. He rolled over and Eskel opened his arms. Geralt burrowed into them, hiding his face against his scarred shoulder. 

“I’m sorry I never met him. I think I would have liked him.”

“You would have. He’d have driven Lambert mad, but you all would have liked him.” Geralt paused, unwilling to bare as much of himself as he knew he would if he continued, but the words he hadn’t spoken all year had built up behind his teeth and he feared they’d choke him if he didn’t speak. There was no one else to say them to. “They found his body in his rooms. I could still smell the blood when I went looking. Someone’d thrown out the mattress. They told me that they buried him, but they wouldn’t tell me where. I— He wanted to be buried by the sea.” Geralt struggled to keep his breath even. “He had nothing to steal. His rooms were at the heart of the city, there should have been people there, someone should have— He wanted to move to the coast.”

“We’ll help you find him, Geralt. We’ll go to Oxenfurt with you in the spring.”

They had lain like this when they were young, tucked into each other’s arms against the cold of Kaer Morhen and the aches of training. After the massacre, Lambert started joining them. Geralt wondered for the first time if Vesemir had ever had someone to share a bed with, as they did. Or as he had with Jaskier. If he too lay awake, staring at the cracked ceiling, blankets knotted in his fists as he shivered against a cold that didn’t seem to care it was the height of summer. If he had lost them when Kaer Morhen was attacked or before, if he’d had an Eskel to hold him together through it when he returned to the keep and found the one person he wanted to see most wasn’t coming back. It might have taken years for it to sink in, for the denial to pass. Most witchers didn’t return every year, after all. Geralt had thought that perhaps, if only Jaskier had been like him, it would have gone differently. But had he been a witcher, he would not have been himself, and different doesn’t mean better.

Jaskier’s grave was a little plot at the back of a yard, marked with a stone and the yellow dandelions that bloomed around it. It was shaded by an oak, the rustle of its leaves a quiet counterpoint to the rumble of passing traffic. Geralt knew it wasn’t what Jaskier would have picked, but perhaps he was satisfied with it. There were people around. Not many in the graveyard, but close by, living their lives. Jaskier had always loved getting to see it, had said it was a privilege. Geralt never understood that. People simply passed by him and each other, untouched and unremarked. Perhaps, he thought, kneeling in the spring grass, Jaskier was right. It was a privilege.


End file.
